This invention relates generally to handling equipment and more particularly to mobile devices for handling produce cartons in the field.
As labor costs in agriculture rise, the need for mechanization continues to increase. In harvesting lettuce according to the most modern and mechanized techniques, the lettuce heads are cut from the plants and placed on a traveling harvester which covers a number of rows. On the harvester, packing hands receive the lettuce heads, wrap them in cellophane and pack them in cardboard cartons. These cardboard cartons are then sealed and dropped off of the harvester, back into the field along one central row space in the middle of the rows being harvested. Trailers are then brought into the field with pallets on them and the cartons are picked up by hand and stacked in cross-tied tiers onto pallets on the trailer. This loading of the cartons from the ground onto a trailer is presently a back breaking chore and the most labor consuming function of an otherwise nearly mechanized operation. It has not been found feasible to palletize the cartons as they are packed on the havesting machine since the loading off of the palletized cartons onto field trailers would slow down the harvesting process. Also, bringing forklift trucks into the field to handle the palletized cartons has been found to be too damaging to the crops and field roads.
What is needed, then, is a machine for picking up the cartons after they have been dropped from the harvester in a space between a group of rows being harvested by the harvester, and to place these cartons onto pallets in tiers that are cross-tied. Such a machine should store enough of the palletized cartons to make transfer loading to a field trailer efficient.